do not resuscitate this harsh dismantling of the self
I cannot live this way any longer
fractured dreams drooling out of my mouth
as I sleep in...
I sat up and read the alarm clock dial from the bed. 10 a.m. It was too late. I should have been at work...
the relentless
drip
drip
drip
tedium of
my sobriety
is matched only
by the cliché
predictability
of a relapse
so, i displace
any program
into a holding
pattern
closer
to interference
than a pathway
it's
mechanical knowledge
capable of allowing
a functional
indulgence with
a detox...
I dreamed she got a tattoo
my mother
on her back
she lowered her robe for me
to see a map.
It looked like North and South
America
silhouetted in black.
She...
The day she fell my mother had
30 rolls of toilet paper
neatly on her linen closet shelves.
The list of things I might not do again,
like...
The radio plays funeral music.
Mother enters my dream,
acknowledges love is a sail
and sets me adrift.
Perception is only
one part of the whole.
Come morning my boat
has...
I stepped in vomit today
it oozed between my toes
I write this because
it’s not everyday you step
in your own filth
wait, actually
it is
organs all thumping my bones
a glistening forehead
sweat gathering in small gangs
raw fingers running
around my temples
cuticles gnawed away
dried blood in the crevices
manic voicemails at 3...
the prongs are there to use
don't get your fingers dirty
a lot of nice things are sticky
the viscous snot ball
the brown bruised banana flesh
there are...
to make amends to the world,
to voices in the wind
denied by closed windows,
to ghosts old and new
that pick and fret at loose threads,
to all...
Oh, for god's sake, let’s not talk about the coming winter
or soldiers waiting outside, rifles readied—
wave them in for a gin.
A ‘40s hit song...
PUFFIN ROCK
___________
YELLOW CROWNED HERON LAGOON
___________________________
THE MIDNIGHT SONS
_________________
When I was quite young, our neighbors’ daughter
was going to school to be a teacher and had learned
from her parents I spent many hours...
“Hawaii wildfires burn historic town of Lahaina 'to the ground'” - BBC
I remember coffee-flavored ice cream at the Royal Scoop,
how it made me long to...
I completely cracked it yesterday.
Everyone I showed it to agreed.
The Professor of Creative Writing
covered his mouth and ran from the room.
It even made my...
As I sat with my book
and glass of Chardonnay
one Monday on the patio,
a fly flew by,
and as I flicked my wrist
to sweep it on...
Let everyone in. Let in a flinty-eyed coal miner from Elk Creek, and a tiny cleaning lady who lives above a bakery in Uppsala....
they kept the dress
in a locked trunk
in the attic
gathering dust for decades
forgotten when they passed
away—one following the other
as is often the case—
and years slid...
There are words that do the poetry, they are endless, you can get the lawn the way it was light and dark, always moving,...
the language
of the finest wool
and metaphors
splashed throughout
as vivid colors
of sky white
cobalt blue
and blood red
while its opaque
meaning is well-
hidden in an
abstract motif
but that sheen
—what a...
eighteen years it’s a lifetime
hair changes
teeth most of all
yet his accent no softer
he doesn’t ride any more
but the stains remain
blood and grease
grace and danger
his...
Today cannot decide.
I linger, eyes at half-mast,
beneath a dome of curdled milk
and a star sleeping in.
I pretend to exist
until I take form,
like a watercolor
bleeding...
I have
molded
this Maine
morning
into a smooth
glass swallow
for your sill,
to shore up
the sharp
clean cerulean
& remind you
of the real sky
& me.
he sits at his desk
writing poems in his head
stares out at the clouds
attempts to decode Nature's own
writ in dripping cyphers on the panes
it’s August and nobody’s listening
but you
I had to leave
it’s like some hyperactive child
is coloring in the nights with black crayons
the scribbles getting in my...
I said
do not simplify
I fucking understand
my opinion
differs from yours
but I fucking get it
I do not require
repetition, new angles
greater enunciation
volume or analogies
I knew he’d fucking...
From this angle, a day’s last rays make embers of cattails
bent in supplication to an unrepentant wind trying to force
the Colorado into retrograde. A...
roam the yards
flock to the sound
of an opening door
hoping for scraps
tossed our way
tasty, random, diverse
cluck and quibble
scrabble in life's compost pile
double-scratch for juicy tidbits
snatch...
I'm mowing the lawn
in a different direction!
purple roses
and blood red candy
a passerby
who knows the secret
you withhold from everyone else
they keep the confession
in their haunted spirit
lay it on the altar
make a...
Schoolyard children rush
the chain link fence, rattle
the metal breathlessly, ask
the man in the wheelchair:
"What happened to your feet!"
When a mountain is dismantled
from eons of wind and rain,
how can I say it’s gone?
When it has fondly spread itself
across this land
re-shaping the terrain.
When...
or divorce or some means
by which the poor lass is on her own,
My lass, without fail,
will ask me:
What are you here for?
Tell me. Why...
I’ll die.
I’ll go brain dead.
I mean, I’ll be here
but in some straw wrapper
exiting through the skull
and brain matter.
What’s the matter?
They’ll all say trying to...
Abstract Expressionism | 12 × 16 Cm | On Paper | 2023
Material: Acrylic, Gouache
Sun sliced through the window
warming my face,
my skin tinted pink
by skinny morning clouds.
Mom was sleeping.
Harry was up.
His footsteps creaked
just above where I stood,
running water...
Grief rides its own wavelength,
reconciliation earns an expiration date,
regret becomes a badge;
some songs turn unlistenable,
but we listen anyway.
I check myself for a heartbeat.
Trains run...
somewhere between a full irish breakfast in galway
& a sunny sail on the mediterranean,
i dove between gentle waves,
swam circles on my side
so i’d never...
i feel
so goddamn
happy, sometimes
i wanna take the damn
out of God
grab fistfuls
of his oxygen
steal
that single beam
of pure sunlight
slicing
thru the east window
crush them together
melt 'em
like crayons
over
that
precious
Picasso
The hurried girls in flight
the mighty half to rule the rabid
roasting meat and placing it on the dirty tray
I'd like to say I depend...
Walking wide-eyed, the child drops
to his knees, for the stream is all around
and flowing. He lifts the rock, the water
slurping its way beneath with...
Every once in a while I feel a love story coming on it’s like nourishment.
I don’t even remember who shot JR about that summer...
tenets of the most devout
are tempered with a tinge of doubt;
every joyous moment spent
will cost a hundred in lament;
beauty passes in a flash,
reduced to...
The wind will change color
and we will go fishing at daybreak
even as things can’t happen as they did before
but approximation of the past is...
She calls to me across the pasture.
Over here, I answer.
Grasses shrink
from her big yellow teeth
as she approaches—
weeds don’t know
a mare's gentleness.
And I still miss...
the star of the show
out for a daytime stroll
masquerading
as a round cloud
wearing designer shades
trying to go unnoticed
before tonight’s big performance
The windows weep for wilder air
to sweep the ghost imprisoned where
I sleep these widow weedy days;
your smell still bathes my pillow case -
love’s detritus...
(Rotring Isograph and Pigma Microns pens on mixed media paper)
These dust motes, so gently pirouetting,
can, from certain angles in slanted light,
reform to embody the departed.
Libraries are full of such airborne ghosts
moving quietly between...
when you decide
not to isolate
any longer
& a bird shits
on your
ice cream cone
as you walk
along the midway
at the state fair
so you take out
your pocket knife
&...
betrayed by
flesh: blood
beats tattoos
against the
underside of
skin flushed
in steady push to expand surface area on palms and soles, prime targets for a
body demanding to be...
i had mistaken myself for the graveyard
somewhere history closed its circle
with an indifferent embrace
mundane acknowledgements of life
were carved on granite marble sandstone
skull scapula and...
i’m sorry i couldn’t go to your game today
i was on the verge of capturing
a universe in a grain of sand
and i’m sorry i...
There are exactly 8,041,272,548 humans
on our planet. The last one in the count
is a feisty, baby girl named Maria-Angelica
born in a Manilla slum to a...
lately I’ve been floating around
I don’t want my feet on the ground
that’s a drag
I’d rather watch you from above
I’d rather hover
I need something to...
The gossip
always the latest –
if you want to know,
she’s the one,
you needn’t ask,
she’ll just tell
but;
one day
she just stops.
When asked
she replies
that she’s been
unkind, as if
she...
there was a gentle breeze going, then
the sun came through.
A Jew, a Christian & a Muslim walk into the bar.
Each one orders a Day of Judgement on the rocks
with a Resurrection of the Body chaser.
A Buddhist walks...
1.
We begin as night watchers
bringing news and lanterns;
we end with the guilt and relief
of a called-off search.
2.
There is no fresh light,
no star to see...
1.
Yesterday a rat snake crawled up into
the eaves and into a mourning dove's
nest of twigs. This morning we found
five shells and yolk on the...
The photographer sees his shadow and becomes part of the landscape.
Stanley Tucci is all in white and wears turquoise rings. If flirtation is a dance
we dance the softest dance of breezes. He has eyes...
The daffodil is vicious as the fox,
just softer in consumption—
does not pursue another’s face
beyond the garden wall—only the sun,
the moon, the air and soily...
it was that high school
was a thousand different kinds of cruel
this one got caught jerking off
in the school bathroom
that one fucked a goat
it was...
They tore down a part of my hometown last week,
imploded it to be precise, dissolved it from the inside
as with cancer. A crowd came...
Mom hoed the dead soil
outside her Section 8 housing,
tossing in coffee grounds,
potato peels,
and the crumbs
of a Little Debbie snack cake,
butting her cigarettes in weeds,
saying...
The full moon
was staring at me.
I felt it in Braille.
Thousands
of little raised dots
erupted on my skin.
I lifted my hand
to wave hello
& found it fisted
inside...
love is a lion
your head in its mouth
poetry in your throat
I was feeling down
it was Memorial Day weekend
and I just wanted to sit among nature
along with a hundred other dumb souls
nowhere to park, so...
is the day I find the wolves
you can count on that.
I will follow along
the s-curve of your path,
the one that pings
my search image
and has...
Tony next door is suddenly old
I saw him yesterday
curved behind
his slow lawn mower
and Eric across the street
rickety with his shovel
his wife, my age, a...
Carla at the Veterans Crisis Line
tells me she has never met with negativity like mine
I didn't tell her I've met plenty of cross-dressing sockcuckers
whose...
He pointed it out like a carnival oddity
a bearded lady or monkey playing guitar,
perhaps an albino deer or lion with the
head of an eagle....
knows
the
last
time
is
the
last
time
until
it
is.
was worse
than anything
he could have imagined,
but
he didn’t
want to dull it,
so
he put
aside the glass...
walked
out in the yard
and stared at the trees.
this time
by a
bird
whose aim
was more direct,
on target
and effective
than any of
the critics
who dislike me,
my poems,
my attitude,
my way of writing or
just my way of
seeing things.
this bird
should...
I mean, put my car in your pool
you know we are never going
to forestry school together
no food, no water
Omaha Beach ya know
my heart looks...
There are no words,
only eyes
in a silent world
where your presence is enough;
there is no time,
only pure promise,
memories like crumpled notes,
and empty sugar packets,
each with...
too busy directing the marches
he'll watch you fall
smile as the nets fail
the audience gasp
and all that's left
when the clowns have gone
are the rabbits
no miracles,...
you mean it was the settings that were wrong
yes.
so, it was all your imagination?
yes.
I toss
my hat
onto the empty chair
next to me
i think
it was 1969
and we were sitting on
the floor in the front room of her house,
playing
records on the stereo.
i remember
playing Steppenwolf
and Simon and Garfunkle.
i...
if you're reading this,
you've already felt it:
a tingle
an itch, an ache
you exist
in a kind of hollow agony orbit:
the cool knot pleasure, orgasm
of a burning...
When the city's in trouble
beware the brooding hero
whose beacon burns inside his chest
to throw designs on nightly skies
to dazzle unprotected eyes
and wraps bleak wings...
Gaia speaks as Mother Earth, whispers softly to her child
Child answers Isis, goddess of trees and forests wild
Pachamama swaddles babe and holds him to...
I drive the same route daily,
flip through the same stations,
but today all my radio presets
were phonemes and static.
I ruled out the weather,
because the sky...
I'm addicted
to the abandoned rail trestle
over Grindstone Creek
it's far enough away
to be romantic
and it's in the woods
I go there, eat the lunch
I have brought...
After this pestilence is over
if we are free again and I am still young enough
We will go back to my birth mountains of Albuquerque
and...
The next time I have
ringing in my head I’m not
gonna answer it
I think I’m tired when I retire,
I know I fall asleep.
Something’s wrong, I don’t know what.
I sit up wide-eyed wondering.
I check the locks, I...
A painting called Life
on a museum wall
after hours
hangs
lifeless.
The museum opens
people stroll
down the aisle
pause at Life
give Life
meaning.
Early May plums
the size & color
of green olives
are well hidden
among the emerald leaves.
In the next months
as they enlarge
& purple
& eventually fall
& split open
& when
the...
Awake and voracious ...
I feel like if I must violate the peace then so be it
jump in the word pile give off an inexpensive...
the peace
is as plentiful
as the water
surrounding
this city
moving away
from its bays
into its heart
blue-gray
permeates
and the eyes
are tempted
at every turn
to take in
the wisdom
that shimmers
under
its many bridges
Tank Girl - 1
Pencil, graphic ink pencil, coloured acrylic inks, ink brush, coloured pencils, chalk pastels, black ink on Strathmore Illustration Board - 42cm...
I tell myself
I am not as fat
as I look
& it’s true
I do tell
myself that—
because
I am a liar
a big fat liar
the scale agrees
fuck the scale
&...
If I were an Orca
off the coast of Portugal
near the Straight of Gibraltar
I’d try to sink your sailboat.
How would you like it
if I hovered...
I wished
to be forever happy.
It was granted.
Now I don’t know
what it means anymore.
Pencil, graphic ink pen, ink and brush on Daler-Rowney smooth Cartridge drawing paper - 52cm x 37cm
When I was nineteen, lost, alone,
depraved and often raving from
the lack of food and meaning,
walking the streets for days
on end after dropping out
of college...
Klint rubs his knife clean against his dingy shirt. He thinks I never notice blood, metallic taste that lingers from a kiss, or his...
You were dead, I'm certain.
I knew from the way we all
looked away from your bed
and into our phones. You sat up
and grabbed both my...
It was always
in cluttered antique shops
that my wife and I could get our fill
of nostalgia: where a 100-year-old typewriter
may sit atop a 1950s television...
I admire the fit of the monkey into the alarm
& the women who drive their obscene sofa trucks from mailbox to church
... well, this...
We had goose bumps on our chocolate skin
because we weren't well dressed for the weather
We didn't think about clothes when we fled motherland
on aluminum...
I sit on the balcony like a droopy shirt
and hope that I get assassinated
the green SUVS and white mini vans
pass by
with no understanding
of my...
and said "Maximalist" as if
it explained everything. I gave
her muffins with cranberries,
pine nuts, rooibos tea and dark
chocolate. I warned her
to duck so she wouldn't
hit...
I’m not crazy
anymore
trying
to see myself
like you see me.
My reflection
bouncing off
the mirror
is no longer the me
who used to bounce
off of reality.
Still,
I think
you must be
meshuga
for wanting
to...
...the long wave swells and rolls towards my shore
sound is sucked from air
till only the subterranean roar
of a distant heart is felt
and breath is...
I know where all the graves lie;
those of my father, mother,
close friends, acquaintances,
some uncles, some aunts.
My parents' I visit often,
the relatives' as often as...
if you
were only
as thin as
one atom
one
wide
one
tall
one
deep
you can bet your atomic arse
electrons would still think you're fat
the house grows smaller
with each step I take
walls pinching in
a carnival room
your chair in its corner
worn like a molar
a trick you still do
blowing smoke...
A flock of Dunlins startle
rushing to rise
on a Merlin rumor.
Murmuring among themselves
when to shrink or swell
to foil an intrusion.
Summer speckled plumage
strobing
like northern lights on...
I let the date whisper through me
like slow bullets each year
I refuse to count
will not say it’s been howevermany years now
for time does not...
HEYYYYYYYYYYY STUPID
HEYYYYYYYYYYY STUPID
the windshield wipers chant
as I battle the midnight rain
for a pack of Lucky Strikes.
"Everything's a metaphor," he said,
deadheading the rosebush,
thick gloves protecting him from its spite.
"Is it?" I asked, "Even us?
Are we just a metaphor?"
And though he...
They had deep dark secret day at school one time only. I don’t think they were prepared for the results that decimated the entire town, so...
Winding towards Josselin
through woods
green as absinthe,
sharp as a lime slice,
I drop the roof
and speed carries
the smatter of rain
over the car and away.
Along the ditches
pollarded...
the air from the vent
suddenly shuts off
and now my thoughts
are so clear
I actually
have to deal with them
like a 20-foot rogue wave wall
appearing suddenly out of
a placid, gray-teal ocean
giving no time for fear
to be digested, nor for
comprehension to do its part,
heaving...
We are under a spell today
the rules of gravity suspended
birds float through the fog
It is my eldest daughter’s birthday
and this is an all-day...
my kitchen again --
the flash of sunlight
on the counter was you
and has me talking
to the sky
Machines under alarm
a squeeze from a warm hand.
A whisper—please don’t die.
I tried to reply
but got confused
in all the commotion
never noticing the shocks
from cold white...
In Midnight's hour I take my tongue
and place it on the floor.
(It loves to run about and play
with Beetle, Dung, and Spore.)
Then Teeth and...
When distant wishes calling you
in breezes rushing off the bay,
return, as blush of deja vu,
of distant whisper calling you
to kisses spent at twenty two
which...
I slept in a small room
I dreamed there as a boy
the moon came & went
wind knocked on my windows sometimes
in the grass
in the fields...
(Warning: Adult Content)
I was just
writing this poem
where I was going
on and on and on
when really
I just want to fuck
it’s spring
I’m frustrated
and I’m not
attracted to...
The annoying drone
a mile over the hill,
I-35 tinnitus.
It helps to pretend
it’s a waterfall or rapids
or squalling river valley winds.
At night
its white noise
puts me to...
I coaxed you into my life
like a wild animal and loved you too hard.
Like when the fox said to the Little Prince,
To you I...
He conforms his tired bones
to the shape of a bed,
crosses his arms,
lets eyes
go to grey-
spinning the world
a needle grabs dust
on a vinyl LP,
no lyrics,
no...
When you get off the boat
your perception changes
You watch things more closely
Like my beloved old tree dying
I never imagined it would become dangerous
There was...
Lost at Sea
Alzheimer’s Pantoum
I first noticed when we sailed as we often did from Robinhood Cove to Bath.
A thick fog swaddled the boat, mist...
The distance between us
is a giant red star.
The irregular shapes
of particulate matter-
drifting away. Your eyes
looking elsewhere.
he's out there now
row 2
forcing tines into the rain-packed crust
beating greedy roots against the fork
shaking loose clumps of soil and stone
salting the earth with...
Another packing up dream
and we're getting good at this.
The embroidered table runner
goes beneath the bundled
purple china cow. As we add linens
to cushion around it,...
I got a 10-gallon hat
But my head’s so fat
I can only put it on
1 gallon at a time
The limbo of estrangement,
the burden of a secret,
the fragile hope of a ceasefire,
the suddenness of endings,
the wisdom in not speaking,
spaces between music notes,
the stealth...
at the beginning
it was mostly words
with which our minds
spoke to one another,
till some empty well
of curiosity had filled;
a wall of comfort
had been built,
word by...
Wild child.
Never mild child.
Shut the fuck up child.
Golden child. Scapegoat child—after while
—go to therapy child. What do you know,
child? After a while you don’t...
Gray sheets of steel rain,
each drop a tap,
a strum, a drum
upon the metal roof.
A pickup band,
hard rock, a heavy
metal sound all
loud, distorted,
hoping to be
famous,...
on a motorized scooter
no purpose in life
mustard drips off his hotdog
This is the second time that Charles Bukowski appeared in my little magazine Clock Radio of the mid to late 1980s. He and I had...
I spoke for my sister on the occasion of her death.
I reassured the kindly and the concerned that I would
curate her memories. Yet, I...
Running through tall grasses
glass jar in hand, cover off –
I can still detect a faint scent
of peanut butter wafting up.
He traps one first, a...
the world is spinning
into myth again and
all I can do is watch as
hummingbird nests hang
askew and all the fuchsia
gemstones buzz into being,
one by one....
Windsor & Newton Black Indian Ink, Manuscript black and white Dip Pen acrylic ink, Kuratake Black Sumi Ink on Strathmore Illustration Board for heavy...
it’s 75 degrees
the first real nice day
since winter
I’m staring at a patch of grass
with a confused look on my face
like I should be
doing something...
I am a friend to:
eggs and
the meditative journey of achieving perfect home fries--
rinse
chop
rinse
heat
olive oil on medium until it just begins to spit wisps of...
I said I had never seen one.
They speak up there, above the cliff.
We hunt them, said old Ted, spitting on the ground,
Chase deer, eat...
she told me
that she had suffered
from thyroid cancer
explaining
in some detail
that because it was removed
she no longer
had any desire for sex
I asked her
if she still
had...
regular twelve-hour shift walk with a clock
in Grimethorpe as security guard round N.U.M. remains, to find key, fit clock,
walk ripped floor tiles, dust, unused...
The case can be made that everything we do
is done for distraction
from the most righteous to the most evil
even love is a distraction
or the...
Warm air rises to the ceiling.
I draw a deep breath,
stretch out my arms
with fingers like feathers.
My wife sees me lean
to the wind, take flight
like...
but I never mailed it
what’s the point
the guy is dead
would his carcass crack open a beer
his rusty smith corona clack
beneath skeleton hands
while he searched...
remains of snowmen
now heaps of ice
hard as bone
No one asked you.
My phone
suddenly speaks
in a mostly
quiet room.
“I’m sorry,
I didn’t quite
get that”
Everyone
looks at me
as I murmur
Shut up Siri
They go where nothing does
not even moonlight
Finding a way to slice the air
and ride the wind
If you see one
bow down in wonder
Touch it not
Their...
Start with a comfortable room, perhaps
a warm kitchen, then add something odd,
a clock running backwards, a drawer
with a chicken bone wired as a pull.
Mix...
the window admits light
into the dark room
an empty couch against the wall
a book open on the table
you raise your hand over the coast
where it...
Nothing new. Messy room.
Mismatched. Teacher dull.
Hair tangled. Lunch room balk.
Cigar box full of broken chalk.
Missed assignment. Deadline
passed. Theme obscure.
Outclassed. Scratched
albums. No sleeves. Order
wrong. Apologies.
Paid...
there is a realm
I'm often transported to
when reading great poetry
it's one in which the common
becomes more refined
and the simple, more profound
where my words no...
Mom wanted me and Janie
to start school at the same time,
both be kindergarteners,
to take the bus
to and from,
almost like twins.
“That’d be better,” Mom said.
“For...
Hardly a slither in the half-light
yet still gleaming
as if to restore our faith
in shackle and shank, mast
and boom
No harm to look and linger at...
Had I seen the sweat pouring down the face
or the abject fear in the eyes, or if
I'd heard the screams of terror
as my hand...
Last weekend I went to this wedding in San Luis Obisbo, and I didn't even get laid.
It's a funny thing how at every wedding,...
We call it the cabin this home of ours
Tucked in between the lake and a snaking
Half mile driveway we call a road
Lined with wild...
At age 14, I hauled alfalfa hay
for a big bay mare, mucked
her stall while a Philco radio back
in the tack room blew a hurricane
for...
arriving early
is being on time
being on time
is being late
being late
a disgrace
and waiting
in the clinic lobby
for my name to be called
is something to do
i’ve lived long
a desert denizen
surrounded
by saguaros
in lower elevations
than these northern hills
where wheat grasses grow
where pronghorn graze
& briefly
after i broke up the ice
in the bird...
my house has been invaded
by maintenance men
it’s not their fault
but I’m a prisoner here
the bars of social anxiety
keep me from any escape
the house is...
on your front lawn. i do not puddle.
i am no slouch. i did not relish
the enchantment of your touch
when you gave me two lumps
of...
strut
your anorexic poem
down the page
like
a Gucci model
down the runway
both
pretending
they don't give a fuck
At the edge of the sidewalk, looking like a black blotch against the snow with two small sticks for legs and a stubborn beak,
a...
I have heard people say they think in shapes and some in colours and one time a guy told me he thinks in hurricanes...
In memory of N. "Rain" Dailey,
Salem, Massachusetts, 1998
I light a photograph on fire,
toss it to the outgoing
winter tide;
flames char
her despicable face
reducing it to ashes.
After...
pebbles in this stream
once wild & sharp-tongued, now
a shining example of obedience, conformity
there are dark
waves
all I have to do is jump
in them
and I’ll disappear forever
I won’t drown
I won’t get washed out to sea
just at the moment...
letting go of your hand
I fell into the night sky
high above the streetlight
where you stood
I did not beg you
but I begged the world
not to...
In the freezing winter of our dissolution,
when his engine block cracked
in the Ford Econoline van, fracturing our sanity,
making our lawn a weeds cemetery,
coyotes saved us...
This is the time
that cannot decide,
a penumbra of seasons
where everything hovers
between either and or,
string lights and marigolds,
and no one bothers
to enunciate correctly.
I am flustered,...
A trailblazer over brown hairs
a thin cut from
old razor legs
smooth out
by lotion
by rain
by running in the rain
by the dull pounds of my feet
by the...
Lately, each experience feels uncommon.
Living in one room with a pot-bellied stove,
a wooden crate for a bookcase, a rug
of woven rags, my thoughts beat...
to a heart attack,
that greasy, salty
hunk of heaven.
Oh, lowly worker,
be my savior.
Bring me a box,
a bag, a promise
of fries, of fat.
Hand me my
happiness, my...
write of parlay
we chatted over manners and harbored edges. these things … moved the line into a place of rural contemplation.
blasée,
the feminine rolls her hidden eye—
he marvels at the width and breadth
of the mystery;
he is her ripened fruit, fallen into life;
and she is the...
I would
give you
my fortune
if I had one.
Until then
these rocks
in my head
are yours.
For example,
this one.
I haven’t left the house in weeks,
limping room to room, forgetting
what I came for, wearing unwashed
the goose-turd green flannel pajamas
I inherited from my mother-in-law’s awful
second...
today marks the 40th anniversary of her death
I still haven't learned how to play the drums
but the January birds are singing like spring is...
My sister Cape was only two years older than me except for the summer months we were one thin year apart.
And there it is...
i love my son
i love each of my sons
i have loved them for a long time
i love each and all of my sons very...
she is a blank canvas
loitering on a Gothic style easel
how many ghosts of painters needed
to finish her shrouded pine trail?
Dad let us stay up
the nights Mom went out
to sing with Sweet Adelines,
saying we were big girls
and could put ourselves to bed.
“You don’t need...
Lacquer 40x40cm
I have Magoo eyes, narrow slits
carved through bone that filter distractions
and see to the future.
When tapped with a toothbrush
my broken teeth ring with glockenspiel...
i don't think about him much
he wasn't very good
and i wasn't either
but marked in red pen
at the top
of my first poem for class
he wrote—
"Watch...
Among the litany of lost relics,
a Swiss music box tree stand
that played O du fröhliche, silver
and sent home after the war
and a holy rustic doll...
When I am old
...
I remember her porch
her cat in there
it was screened in
it was summer
late at night
almost morning
the darkness and
the temperature
just right
I looked at her dad’s easy...
Into this temper of writers
called poets
I shove my own shoulders
Respectful of the undertaking
I chisel my words
and aim with care between lines
All this poetic lingering
to...
There are birds here,
the garden has no fence.
My neighbor checks in on the roses
and brushes away lice with soft
working hands.
I'm looking out from the...
The moon is above me
my toes are cold so I put some shoes on
not because I'm going anywhere
but just because it's harder to keep...
Feels like I have a bag over my shoulder that’s full of yesterday. As I approach Alice’s place it gets not exactly heavy but...
and gets hung
on the curb
then,
freed by the wind
lands in brown weeds
beside the big ditch.
I kick at a beer can.
the houses seem smaller,
the neighborhood
tired, run...
large pine trees in a bark beetle free forest
after living long lives of capturing carbon
& releasing oxygen & having been a home
to myriad wildlife...
I stepped outside
my flat I named
the bunker
and there was
a woman
bestial
with insane eyes
surrounded
by the trash
of her own making
syringes
toilet paper
plastic bottles
and a tomato
"you really shouldn’t
be here"
I...
"Flight" an acrylic painting on linen.
poems
are not meant
to
impress you.
they
are written
to
help me
make it
thru the night.
...on a very cold morning.
